June 13th, '08 - One feels burnt through by the heat

Midlands, Maymyo

June 13, '08

My dear Arthur

I was glad to get your letter and good wishes for coming events; you will have the cable probably before this reaches you.

Richard wants you to be very careful in dealing with Mr MacDonell; he has not been re-appointed to the Secretaryship to the Legislative Council of Burma and this I take it to be rather a ‘slap in the face’ but being out of Rangoon society now I do not hear the inward meaning of these things.

Of course it all depends how much he offers you and guarantees, but unless this is very much better than you are likely to attain to at home, it would be better, I should say, not to throw in your lot with him, but to stick to home where, if things are on a more modest scale you have not the nightmare of being invalided home suddenly by the climate and the shattering of all your prospects thereby, which haunts so many people here, especially when they are not entitled to a pension at any moment.

We are pulling along quietly – both Richard and I feeling the days when we are apart dragging a good deal, but the time is half over now and we hope to have a really good house by the cold weather so that I hope it will not be necessary to look forward to so long a time apart again.

With a well-built house, well sheltered by verandahs it is possible to remain in the hot weather when it was impossible for me to do so this year in the little wooden barn like places, which alone were available.

It is difficult to give anyone an idea of the heat. Sometimes it seems very bearable; at other times, if one is the least bit seedy, one feels burnt through by it. There were many days when one felt one’s skin even too hot a covering.

At night Richard spreads a piece of matting over the wire mattress of his bedstead and lies on this in the thinnest silk pyjamas. Pillows and ordinary mattresses are unbearable the moment it gets at all hot. Some people water their mat to make it feel cool before lying on it.

When one has never lived in a temperature considerably hotter than blood heat, it is impossible to realise the feel of it. Here, of course, I do not get such intense heat but it is often uncomfortably hot and nearly always as hot as oppressively hot summers at home.

With much love,
your affectionate sister,
Enid

June 13, ‘08 - Yearning for home

Midlands, Maymyo

June 13, ‘08

My dear Arthur

This is just a line to congratulate you on your progress in public and private life. I feel sure that you would be rash to throw up now the footing that you have got on the ladder in order to come East.

As I said at the time, the opening was one which I thought you might like to know of as you wished to be told of such things but at the same time I thought there were many reasons why you should decide against it. No-one who has not tried it can realise the feeling of being thousands of miles away from one’s country and people and home friends, even if one has one’s nearest and dearest with one. Richard’s heart as well as mine is often yearning for home and we look forward greedily to our first trip back.

The Churchwardenship is a very honourable post and I hope your energy may help to bolster up the old Church. You will have a pleasant colleague in Mr Gifford. About the Masonic honours, I cannot say much as I do not understand them, but Richard will know what it means.

It seems odd to hear of tennis beginning as, now the rains have broken, we consider our summer more than half over. I hope the day is not far distant when I can take up games again which I have never been able to do out here.

With much love,
your affectionate sister,
Enid

Please will you ask Mother to let me know what I owe her for the jackets and socks she sent me.

May 24, '08 - The tennis season is in full swing

Midlands
Maymyo

May 24th, '08

My dear Arthur

I have written rather extensively to Mother this week and also slept late this morning with the result that there is only a minute or two to catch the mail so I must refer you to the other family letters for news.

The tennis season is now, I suppose, in full swing.

I am very pleased to hear about your Churchwardenship. In fact I am more and more convinced that it would be a great pity for you to throw up the position you have now joined in order to take up anything out here that was not a directly Governmental post of a permanent nature with pension attached where your prospects would have no element of risk.

Anything else is rather too much like exchanging two ‘birds in the bush’ for ‘one in the hand’ and I think you would be wisest to stick to your ‘one in hand’.

I must write next month to Margery W to congratulate her on her success with pictures.

Much love in haste,
Enid

Feb 16th, '08 - It is the stamp of the man that is poor

MANDALAY

Feb 16, 08

My dear Arthur

The rush of events has made me forget the long time necessary for a birthday letter to reach you so I fear this will arrive some time after the day. Enclosed is a little present. I had no idea of what to send as shops are not very suggestive here but I saw this and send it as a remembrance to wish you many happy returns of the Day.

I ought to be at Church now but as the service is at 7a.m. today and the Church nearly two miles off and I was a little tired I stayed at home.

Richard is as usual busy with the sick. He often goes to see his free patients – missionaries and nuns and so forth – on Sunday and seldom has much time for Church-going. However I consider that tending the sick is at least as virtuous as hearing a very poor sermon.

I must say that the Church of England does for the most part get the very poorest set of men here that one can imagine. The Vicar of St Saviour’s would be a good preacher compared with the usual thing we get here, not that the preaching matters much; it is the stamp of the man that is poor; and the pay is good – 5 or 6 hundred a year too.

The Earthquake has been the event of the week; I have written a description to Mother.

With much love,
your affectionate sister,
Enid

Jan 18th, '08 - A murder trial

MANDALAY Jan 18, 08

Dear Arthur

I have sealed up Father’s and Mother’s letters but will you tell Mother that the draft I spoke of will come by next mail if it does not come by this; it is for some things I have asked her to get for me.

I am glad to hear that business is brightening a little. There is one thing about life at home in England; everyone round you does not know the exact figure of your income and you don’t get the change for everything priced according to your known income as we do.

For instance, no Lt. Col’s wife, however good a manager she is, can hope to do her housekeeping on the same as a Captain’s wife, nor can she secure servants at the same price; they all know the difference in the incomes. I suppose it is only fair.

It is still delightfully cool but after next month the hot weather will begin.

Richard was away in Rangoon for three days this week and also goes back again on Sunday to attend a murder trial. A Chinaman was murdered and a native was arrested on his own confession. Afterwards however he said the confession was extracted from him by the policeman who held the ends of two lighted cigars to his shoulders to force him to confess.

There is some slight point in the evidence which points to the fact that the policeman may have done the murder himself so the whole issue rests partly on whether Richard says that two boils on the man’s shoulders (which were noticed when he entered Jail) could or could not have been caused in the way suggested.

Mrs Coggan is probably coming to stay with me next week for a few days.

I am trying to work off some arrears of answers to Xmas letters and have not nearly got through them.

With love,
your affectionate sister, Enid

The sketch is one sent to Richard as a joke by Mr Dartmouth here. He is an I.C.S. man, son of Canon Duckworth.

Dec 28th '07 - Hunt the Thimble at the Mackennas

MANDALAY

Dec 28 ‘07

My dear Arthur

The packet of games arrived on Xmas Eve at a time when our furniture and packing cases were being delivered, so we left your parcel unopened until Christmas morning.

Thanks very much for the unique collection of games; Wibble-wobble I know. You would not think them too childish for us if you had seen us all (everyone married and many of them parents) playing at Dumb Crambo and Hunt the Thimble on Christmas evening at the Mackennas. The Diabolo set is much choicer than any one I have seen out here and the air-ball game looks truly exciting.

I have given either Father or Mother a full account of our Xmas festivities. We drank to the health and happiness of ‘Friends and Relations at Home’ and generally did our best to feel as Xmasy as possible, but of course one misses the faces of one’s family and no kindness of friends can ever make up for that.

I had a letter from Mrs Chaplin written from Hong Kong yesterday and also one from Gladys Roberts a few days before in which she describes her house and says they are going lion hunting for Xmas.

We have worked hard on the house and after six days we are really quite settled in. But we shall probably have to move again in two or three months time as this is so far from the hospital.

There is a feeling in the air here sometimes which reminds me of the Southwold air. How I sometimes long for a breath of Southwold wind and the salt bite in the air; the view from the windows of Fairlea on a fine windy morning is one that often haunts me; one gets so weary of the still haze and unblinking sun. It is much better though in Mandalay, for the early mornings are deliciously cold and dark.

The 89th Punjabi’s mess is giving a dance on New Year’s night to which we are invited. Unfortunately I have to join the dowagers now*, so dances pall after a certain time and I get to take that interest in supper which only those who don’t dance can really sympathise with. I don’t suppose we shall stay late though as Richard has a great deal of work to do. We are thinking of having the first of the Xmas puddings cooked that evening.

With much love, your affectionate sister, Enid

* By now, Enid was pregnant with her first child.

Nov 18th '07 - Unrest in India

JAIL HOUSE, RANGOON,

Nov 18 ‘07

Dear Arthur

Many thanks for your letter written from the North. As you say, it is impossible to build much on these appointments where there are so many candidates, but certainly it sounds a suitable sort of thing for you.
I am much distressed to hear that Grandma is not very well and am expecting with some anxiety the next mail when I hope to hear she is well again.

Father speaks in his letter of the unrest in India. I do not think, and it is not suggested here, that this is at all traceable to the European education of young pure natives; on the contrary, the well-educated natives are the ones who realise that the Government of Eastern races must be strong and that socialistic ideas are not understood here and any attempt to propagate them is looked upon as weakness.

No! the discontent is chiefly among the partly educated classes and many people think it is due to the loss of prestige of all European Governments in their eyes by the defeat of the Russians by the Japanese. They had been accustomed before to look upon any struggle with a European power as out of the question.

Of course, Keir Hardie has done incalculable harm and if he has not actually put the match to the revolutionary fire, he has at least precipitated matters by several years. Indeed it is impossible yet to say what he is responsible for, for the gross ignorance of all Eastern question and problems which he displayed is maddening to men who have spent years and sometimes their lives in trying to safeguard the British prestige, only to see their work pulled down by one of their own Government. The Government should prosecute him and put him in prison just as they have the other political agitators in India, but unfortunately the Liberal and Labour party would never consent to this.

It seems to me that the Liberal Party has achieved nothing but a complete mess of Ireland and it seems likely of India too, if they are going to allow such things as Keir Hardie’s tour.

I hope to get some, at least, of my Christmas things off by next parcel mail, but I am so horribly busy.

With love, your affectionate sister
Enid